Current Connections: Controversy,Civility,and Relevance in the Executive Business Classroom

Theoretical Foundation

The basic idea is for students to identify connections between our course material and current events. Students submit a link to an article in the media and clearly explain the connection between that article and some part of the week’s assigned materials. We also allow students to link course material to workplace situations as another form of “current events.”

Existing literature points to some effective strategies for dealing with controversial topics in the classroom, although these are limited to classroom discussion and not to writing (see, e.g., Baker, 2004). A subset of these articles focuses on facilitating difficult conversations in the classroom. Other articles discuss how to bring in current events and apply course concepts to these events through report writing (Halfhill, 1994). In that exercise, however, the instructor has identified the topics rather than enabling students to select their own examples. By allowing students to select topics, we used an approach similar to one suggested by Cotton (2006). She refers to this as Strategy 2: enabling students to discuss their own views. Also, we wanted the written work to serve as a way to defuse the controversy of the upcoming discussion (Hand & Levinson, 2012). These concerns led to our decision to forge a new path, one that involved a brief written submission, completed prior to the class discussion, on a topic of each student’s choice.

There is related literature on civility outside of the classroom, in life and in work, and how a crisis of incivility has emerged in our world (Arnett & Arneson, 1999; Ayim, 1997; Forni, 2002; Hall, 2013; Harden Fritz, 2012). Carter (1998) argues that an appreciation of civility will improve public life, and Bybee (2016) suggests that civil discourse can be moral and robust without sacrificing truth or freedom. In an interesting study of incivility in the higher education classroom, Boice (1996) found that both teachers and students engage in problematic incivilities, including sarcastic comments, highly emotional outbursts, belittling fellow class members, and reluctance to participate in discussion. Faculty members who are interested in encouraging civility in their classroom would be well advised to consult P. M. Forni’s (2003) book, Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct. Through our exercise, we hoped to address these issues by both modeling, encouraging, and reinforcing classroom civility.

There are four underlying pedagogical frameworks that support our exercise. First, simply put, there is a connection between learning and experience (Dewey, 1938; Kolb, 1984; Fenwick, 2003), especially when teaching adults (Jarvis, 1987, 2006). The Current Connections exercise clearly illustrates these principles. The exercise is also consistent with Bloom’s Taxonomy (L. W. Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Bloom, 1956) that supports higher-order thinking through application and synthesis, rather than mere reporting of information. In creating a connection between personal workplace experiences, or current events in business, domestically or globally, students are encouraged to engage in higher order thinking.

Third, this exercise is consistent with the notion that a class can be transformed into a learning organization (Mazen, Jones, & Sergenian, 2000). Mazen et al. (2000) required their students to submit weekly reflections of the class, which were transcribed and distributed to the students at the beginning of the next class for discussion purposes. This approach is quite consistent with ours: It highlights the importance of reflection and vulnerability in learning and the courage of discussing “undiscussables” within a psychologically safe environment (Argyris, 1980; Mazen, 2012). Finally, the work on teaching for transfer (Perkins & Salomon, 1988) suggests that we need to facilitate students’ abilities to transfer theory to various problem-solving contexts so that they can interpret events through general principles.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to:

In addition to introducing students to traditional ethical perspectives (Kantian/deontological, utilitarian, Aristotelian, communitarian), we also focus on organizational ethics and leadership with an emphasis on behavioral ethics. The framework is to think not only about individual ethical decisions but also to put that into a business context and consider what core values are operative both personally and organizationally. Finally, in line with the college’s mission, we look at the impact of leadership on society.

Instructions for Running the Exercise

Conclusion

The current connections exercise is relatively simple to use, allows flexibility and even creativity for students, who find their own contemporary cases of conflicting values in leadership and management in the larger world. The exercise was so well received and so useful for in-class discussion that we will continue its use. Our students appear to be appreciative of the exercise, and, in fact, have commented on how the habit of reviewing media daily started with this exercise.

At a time when facts and truth are very much in dispute—the age of “fake news,” bots in social media, and polarized, uncivil discourse—there is no shortage of controversial issues. We are also mindful that students can find connections that are not as widely broadcast in mainstream or alternative media sites, issues that go largely uncovered by mainstream media. Faculty could choose to avoid conversations about these issues based on their own personal views, yet we strongly encourage consideration of bringing controversy into the classroom. To do so encourages students to be aware of the world around them, to develop a world view, to establish a habit of reflection, to understand how leadership and management affects many situations, and to make their own connections between class materials and contemporary problems. Perhaps most important, this exercise provides a structure within which civil debate can be modeled in a safe space: the management classroom.